Bengaluru: Public-health activists in Karnataka are demanding a dedicated public health cadre, on the lines of Tamil Nadu, to prevent incidents such as the drug racket recently busted in Bidadi in which spurious drugs reportedly reached around 90 hospitals and clinics.Public-health doctor and researcher Dr Sylvia Karpagam said the episode highlighted the need to move from a reactive to a preventive approach to public health and regulation.“If drug inspectors were proactive, they would have detected the racket much earlier. We’ve seen that such rackets can happen anywhere — from manufacturing to procurement to distribution,” she said.Karpagam said the solution is not to clamp down on pharmacists or other stakeholders. “It is essential to have a public health cadre which can carry out on-ground monitoring,” she said.A public-health cadre is a dedicated workforce within the state health system focused on preventing diseases, tracking health threats, monitoring health risks and implementing population-level health programmes, alongside the existing clinical workforce.Public-health researcher Prasanna Saligram of Sarvatrika Arogya Andolana Karnataka said Karnataka’s health department was led largely by clinicians, leaving key officers with limited time and, in some cases, training to oversee broader public health and management functions.“Those in posts like District Health Officer (DHO) do not have time to check the quality of drugs. It is not their fault; they are not trained in management. This is why we have been demanding a public-health cadre. Even though it was announced in the 2026 budget of then chief minister Siddaramaiah, we have not seen any action around it,” he said.Saligram said the lack of dedicated public health personnel was particularly concerning in areas such as drug surveillance, where problems need to be identified before they reach patients.For 2-3 years, activists have been demanding greater safeguards in the procurement and distribution of medicines.“Procured drugs should be quarantined for two months and quality-tested before they are introduced into the supply chain. Plus, staff crunch across departments. With so many factors, it is no surprise that we ended up with spurious drugs in the system,” he said.With Special Investigation Team continuing its probe into the racket, the health department is examining connected cases and tracing the distribution network. “We’ve handed over the drug-control enforcement mandate, too, to SIT. We are trying to see if the supply was established to others as well and which hospitals received fake drugs,” said Ritwik Ranjanam Pandey, principal secretary, health department.
